Speaking to The Drinks Business during a recent visit to Argentina with Santa Rita, Martin Kaiser, chief agronomist at Doña Paula, said: “Sales of Argentine whites in both the domestic and export markets are really on the rise and are growing much faster than we anticipated.

“Whites still only account for around 15% of the total wine production in Argentina but production is growing fast.

Kaiser admitted that Argentina’s flagship white grape, Torrontés, “can often be bitter, short and tired” in character. “We’re working towards a fresher, more mineral style with higher acidity and a longer finish,” he said.

On a commercial scale, Kaiser believes Chardonnay is the white grape aside from Torrontés with the greatest potential in Argentina.

“It’s hard to make good Sauvignon Blanc here as our high temperatures tend to kill the aromatics. Chardonnay is a much more flexible variety to work with,” he said. Doña Paula is one of the only estates in Argentina that makes a 100% Riesling.

“You need to go to the cooler sites in the country to make good aromatic whites – less than 1% of Argentina has the right climate for white wine production, even Patagonia is too warm,” Kaiser revealed.

Another producer in Argentina carving a niche for its whites is Catena, whose White Stones and White Bones Chardonnays are made at its high altitude Adrianna vineyard in Tupungato.By The Drinks Business 06 JANUARY 2016

TintoNegro, or black wine, is a project of Argentine Alejandro Sejanovich and American Jeff Mausbach. They both worked at the Catena winery for several years, Sejanovich as a viticultural director and Mausbach as a global wine educator. They have embarked upon multiple wine projects together, individually and with other partners. The TintoNegro project calls upon their knowledge of and experience with different areas and vineyards in the Mendoza region of Argentina to create an easy-to-drink malbec priced for your weekday dinner table.

The grapes for this malbec come from the Lujan de Cuyo and Maipu areas south of Mendoza. Here the vines are grown at altitudes of 2,600 to 3,300 feet where the sunlight is more intense and the grapes grow thicker skins, giving more intense color as well as sturdier tannins. Temperatures at this altitude have a great range of daytime highs and nighttime lows, helping grapes ripen while maintaining fresh acidity. The vintners think these temperatures give the wine spicy sweet plum flavors while the soils produce grapes with soft texture and ripe tannins.Rebecca Murphy~ The Dallas Morning News

With the majority of terroirs located in a strip of desert at the foot of the Andes, at first glance Argentina seems like a homogeneous country. However, this strip of desert has incredibly variable altitudes, ranging from 600 meters above sea level in the east of Mendoza and the Tulum Valley in San Juan, to 1600m in the Uco Valley and Pedernal, in the provinces of Mendoza and San Juan, respectively.

Thus, in addressing the terroirs of Argentina, it is best to put them in contrast by their altitude. Pedernal and the Uco Valley are very similar to each other. The reason for this is that at a similar altitude – with every 100 linear meters of ascent, the average temperature drops by almost 1ºC-, they have more in common with each other if they are compared with other twin latitudinal regions, but at very different heights, as with the East of Mendoza and Tulum in San Juan.